Reflections, commentaries, critiques and ideas from 40 years experience in the fields of Community Development, Community Education and Social Justice. Useful tools and techniques that I have learnt also added occassionally.

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The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Wednesday, 11 January 2017

Just Enough Is Plenty (Book Review)

In my early twenties I came across Henry David Thoreau and attempted to read
Walden. I admit I struggled. If only Just Enough Is Plenty
was available then I am sure Thoreau’s concepts would have been much easier to
grasp. Samuel Alexander has written an excellent introduction to Thoreau’s
works. Just Enough Is Plenty: Thoreau’s Alternative Economics not only
summarises Thoreau’s ideas it is also a pithy statement of Alexander’s work
itself: it is short, concise, and adequately explains the work of the nineteenth
century forerunner of the simplicity movement. Just Enough Is Plenty
does not take long to read – it comprises less than 50 pages, and is only
one-fifth the length of Walden itself.

I don’t know whether Samuel Alexander intended this or not, but this year
(2017) is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau.
Undoubtedly there will be a number of articles, essays, and perhaps books
celebrating that this coming year. Alexander has beaten them all to it and his
contribution will be hard to beat.

Henry David Thoreau was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard in
1837. He aspired to be a poet but found that poetry was unlikely to provide him
with sufficient income to live on. Like many poets, Thoreau questioned life and
its meaning. Importantly, for his later writings, he asked, “How much do I
need to live well and to be free? “ The answer to this question was to be
pivotal in Thoreau’s writings and is the one that Alexander takes as the basis
for his book.

After a stint of teaching and some unfulfilling jobs as labourer,
pencil-maker, gardener, tutor, and editor, Thoreau left his hometown of Concord
and went to live in the woods. There he built a
cabin, planted crops, fished, pondered for hours on end, and wrote his classic
Walden.Walden is a poetic, metaphor-filled, examination of what it means to
be free, and what it costs in order to obtain that freedom. Thoreau’s answer
was that it doesn’t cost as much as we think it does. With all those metaphors
and poetic writing it is little wonder that as a young man I struggled to grasp
Thoreau’s meanings. Alexander makes it all so clear and he is to be thanked for
enabling the depth and enormity of Thoreau’s work to be so accessible.

Although Thoreau did not coin the term Simplicity Movement,
Alexander suggests that Thoreau was one of its granddaddies. But, in common
with many grandfathers, Alexander suggests that Thoreau didn’t have all the
answers, but he certainly had many of the questions. Perhaps, as Alexander
proposes,

“(Thoreau) was not interested in giving us detailed instructions on how
to live a simpler life; nor did he want to save us the trouble of thinking for
ourselves. Rather, he wanted to stoke the fire in our souls and inspire us with
ideals.”

If Thoreau’s intent was to inspire us with ideals, then it is Alexander’s
intent to inspire us to read and understand Thoreau. He has done this superbly
– I now intend to read Walden sometime in this 200th anniversary of his
birth.

Alexander has not just left us with a string of ideals however. He clarifies
Thoreau’s thoughts on: work, money, how much is really necessary, what is a
comfort, luxury or a necessity, the role of technology (hint: not all
technology, according to Thoreau or Alexander, is appropriate), and what is the
meaning of our lives.

It is to the final point that Thoreau, as an innate, and possibly stifled,
poet often returns. Alexander quotes Nietzsche’s dictum to “Be the poet of
your life,” suggesting that it would have been a phrase with which Thoreau
would have been entirely comfortable. Alexander notes that Thoreau was not
simply attempting to find a simpler way of living, he was keen to answer the
question: enough for what? This question was relevant to Thoreau in nineteenth
century Massachusetts. It is just as vital, perhaps moreso, in the twenty-first
century. Two centuries later we find ourselves not only wishing to find a
personal answer to the question of what for? We also find ourselves
having to answer the question of how much is enough? for the
sustainability of the whole planet.

Alexanders, and undoubtedly Thoreau’s, answer to that second question:
Just Enough Is Plenty.
The book can be obtained here either as a paperback or a “pay as you want”
PDF.

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About Me

I have almost 40 years experience working (paid and unpaid, government and non-government) in community development/education and social justice fields. I have continued to keep myself abreast of philosophies and theories in these and related fields. This blogsite will offer ideas, thoughts, reflections on these fields as well as giving some tools and techniques. I don't pretend that these will be original but I do hope that they will be able to translate some of these diverse ideas into coherent forms accessible to workers in the areas.